Fair and sad, In sin and beauty, our beloved Earth Has need of all her sons to make her glad; Has need of martyrs to re-fire the hearth Of her quenched altars,--of heroic men With Freedom's sword, or Truth's supernal pen, To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again. And she has need of Poets who can string Their harps with steel to catch the lightning's fire, And pour her thunders from the clanging wire, To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer, Arouse the laggard in the battle's rear, Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord wring Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing In golden choirs above, And only wears, for crown and aureole, The glow-worm light of lowliest human love, Shall fill with low, sweet undertones the chasms Of silence, 'twixt the booming thunder-spasms. And Earth has need of Prophets fiery-lipped And deep-souled, to announce the glorious dooms Writ on the silent heavens in starry script, And flashing fitfully from her shuddering tombs,-- Commissioned Angels of the new-born Faith, To teach the immortality of Good, The soul's God-likeness, Sin's coeval death, And Man's indissoluble Brotherhood. Yet never an age, when God has need of him, Shall want its Man, predestined by that need, To pour his life in fiery word or deed,-- The strong Archangel of the Elohim! Earth's hollow want is prophet of his coming: In the low murmur of her famished cry, And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly, Ye hear the near invisible humming Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky Into cool ripples of new life and hope, While far in its dissolving ether ope Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and Here. Father! thy will be done, Holy and righteous One! Though the reluctant years May never crown my throbbing brows with white, Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light Of my thick locks to wisdom's royal ermine: Yet by the solitary tears, Deeper than joy or sorrow,--by the thrill, Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germen, In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung, Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver age,-- By the long wrestle in which inward ill Fell like a trampled viper to the ground. By all that lifts me o'er my outward peers To that supernal stage Where soul dissolves the bonds by Nature bound,-- Fall when I may, by pale disease unstrung, Or by the hand of fratricidal rage, I cannot now die young! * * * * * ODDS AND ENDS FROM THE OLD WORLD